Full Transcript
Serena Gilbert:
The number one thing is you have to have a 100% private area to work. By private area, it’s not the middle of your living room on the couch.
Jeff Thompson:
Job Insights, a podcast to help you carve out your career pathway and enhance the opportunities for gainful employment.
Jeff Thompson:
It’s not just all up like, hey, I’m working from home. I’ve got it made. A lot more comes with it.
Jeff Thompson:
To help you navigate the employment world, and give you job insights, and enhance the opportunities to choose the career you want.
Speaker 3:
Flexjobs.com.
Speaker 4:
FlexJobs is the real deal.
Speaker 3:
Colorado’s own, and this is a company called FlexJobs.
Jeff Thompson:
You can find the Job Insights podcast on blindabilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities Network, with hosts Serena Gilbert, and myself, Jeff Thompson.
Serena Gilbert:
Well, FlexJobs is a unique job service that helps job seekers find opportunities that have some kind of work flexibility.
Jeff Thompson:
People are talking about this all the time in conversations, so if you want to learn from them, share with them, or even give advice, Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired Facebook group is there for you.
Speaker 5:
Finding a great job at a great company can be tough, but now Glassdoor is making it easier for you to find the right job at the right company faster.
Jeff Thompson:
Learn about resources for training, education, and employment opportunities.
Serena Gilbert:
A lot of the federal jobs, and I know at least locally here, a lot of the state jobs have, to help with work-life balance, they offer where you can work from home.
Jeff Thompson:
You can also find the Blind Abilities Community group on Facebook, as well.
Serena Gilbert:
Which is growing every single day, and we post really fun things in that group. If you have technology questions or technology needs, there’s also the assistive technology community for the blind and visually impaired.
Jeff Thompson:
Now, please welcome Serena Gilbert and Jeff Thompson with Job Insights.
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Job Insights. I’m Jeff Thompson, and with me in the studio is Serena Gilbert. Serena, how you doing?
Serena Gilbert:
I am doing great. It’s so awesome to be back in the studio. How about you?
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, love it, love it. We’ve got something interesting to talk about. One of the biggest topics that comes up on the career resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired Facebook group is working from home. Serena, you yourself know there’s not a day… Almost every day, someone mentions something about working from home.
Serena Gilbert:
Yeah, by far, the most popular topic that comes up in our group where anything from what companies are hiring for work from home opportunities to what companies are accessible, and we just want to take some time to maybe talk about what working from home really looks like, and also some tips for making sure you’re not falling for any sort of any scams or anything like that, because the last thing we want is for any individuals in our groups to be taken advantage of by a company that’s not legit.
Jeff Thompson:
One of its biggest appeals that I can imagine people are thinking about is transportation. You’re already home, but when you’re at home, along comes the doorbell, the phone calls, the dog, the kids. Everything else is there. I mean, you just can’t lock yourself in a room and ignore the realities of stuff happening around you, so you’ve got to really think this through a little bit. The privacy of your own home is not really that private, when you really get down to think about it.
Serena Gilbert:
Yeah, most employers, especially a lot of the work from home opportunities are typically customer service type of roles. You might be answering incoming calls, and then providing data or information to the customer. I know with Apple, they don’t want the caller to know that you’re talking to an agent that’s working from home, something weird about Apple. Who knows? They probably want to protect their brand and make it seem like everyone’s working in-
Jeff Thompson:
Part of the orchard.
Serena Gilbert:
Yeah, I’m like where is it at? Working in fancy California over there. The number one thing is you have to have a 100% private area to work, and by private area, it’s not the middle of your living room on the couch. They want a private area, where there’s not going to be weird noises, they’re not going to hear the UPS truck delivering your Amazon package. It has to be a totally private area, where there’s no interruptions and no possible way that somebody’s going to be like, “Why do I hear a dog barking?” I’m not saying you have to soundproof your room, but that is something that they’re going to be looking into is do you have a private place to work?
Jeff Thompson:
Other than the fidget spinner spinning, you really need to be isolated. When you do isolate a room, a portion of your house, that falls into the taxes, too, because if you’re doing your own business, working for someone at home, that space becomes part of a taxable item. That’s another thing that is working from home is you may be a contractor, which brings you into tax responsibilities, so it’s not just all up like, hey, I’m working from home. I’ve got it made. A lot more comes with it.
Serena Gilbert:
The other thing is, depending on the company, some companies will provide you with the technology that you need. They’ll send you everything, because they deal with, maybe, very secure information and need things set up a certain way, but there are some companies that, when you look at the job postings, require that you provide your own Internet, your own computer that meets certain specifications. When they say Internet, you can’t have a WiFi access. It has to be a hardwired access, and for many reasons. We all know routers fail and are not nearly as fast as if you’re hardwired to something. That’s another aspect to think about. Do you have the equipment that the employer is requiring of you, if they do not provide it?
Jeff Thompson:
Just because you’re working from home doesn’t mean you start at 9:45 or 10:15 or whatever time. There are schedules, and they have other people out there doing probably similar jobs, depending on what the nature of the business that you’re in. You still have timeframes that you still have to commit to. That means, if you have kids, you’re not going to be able to babysit the kids, set them up with Mickey Mouse on TV or something… I just dated myself, didn’t I, Serena?
Serena Gilbert:
No, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse still comes on.
Jeff Thompson:
Okay, so you can’t just set them up for that, and then go in and wait, and then go out and pour them cereal and come back in. You have to have a plan. It’s a professional job, and you should treat it as a professional job. You just happen to be working from home.
Serena Gilbert:
I’ve heard many others say, “It’s awesome working from home,” because depending on the company, some do have that flexibility, but many of the entry level ones do not. You start at 8:00. You take your break at 10:05. You’re back by 10:20. It is so specific, and they time it. They can see how long you’re away from your computer and know, okay, you’re not available. What’s going on? It could become a problem if it becomes an excessive period of time that you’re not at your computer.
Serena Gilbert:
I have also heard of individuals saying some of the downside of the working from home is there is a certain level of social aspect that comes with getting up, going to work, catching the bus or catching paratransit, talking with people, getting out there in the weather and seeing sunshine, or being out there just to be seen, be heard. I’ve been told that it can be a little isolating. I mean, yes, you do have a team that you’re working with, and you’re probably having some team meetings, videoconferencing or Zoom or something like that, but you’re not having potlucks or celebrating somebody’s retirement by having a nice dinner or something. That piece is completely removed.
Jeff Thompson:
Exactly, what you’re saying about is the small talk of conversation. When you do show up someplace, and you’ve been working from home and been isolated like that, that small talk just doesn’t come. It needs to be reinforced all the time, to just have it, to be in tune with what’s happening. I can vouch for you there, because I’ve done it. When I was first starting a business, I locked in, and then I found myself at a conference and stuff, and I was like, oh my gosh, I’ve got to work at small talk. It’s awkward.
Serena Gilbert:
Well, and the training can be a little awkward, too. I mean, think back to when you started a brand-new job. How many times did you go to the person beside you, or the person that was training you, and say, “What do I do here? How does this work? Can I sit in on an appointment? Can I shadow you?”
Serena Gilbert:
I’m sure that there are virtual ways that they’re creating those opportunities, but I have a hard time learning that way, when it’s something super technical, which customer service type things could be, because of the company policies and things like that, where you can’t just, maybe, put someone on hold, pop your head over the cube, and say, “Hey, this is what’s going on. Can you help me?” It’s a little bit different that way, when you’re at home.
Serena Gilbert:
You also have to have… This is really important, a certain level of technical skills, too. By that, what I mean is when you’re at home, you can’t just put in a ticket to the IT Department and have someone come over and figure out what’s going on with your computer. You are the troubleshooter when you’re a work-from-home agent like that. You have to be the one that can do some basic things to figure out why something’s not working properly.
Jeff Thompson:
Exactly, and that goes back to having the proper equipment and the knowledge to operate the equipment.
Serena Gilbert:
When it comes to working from home, it is not our goal to completely dissuade you from going in that direction. We just want to set up some realistic expectations, so that you understand, hey, here’s some things I need to think about. Maybe, if I have a very small, one-bedroom apartment that I share with somebody else, a significant other, maybe this isn’t going to be the best setup for me to have the most success.
Serena Gilbert:
There are some definite, huge advantages to being able to work from home. You can have that work-life balance a little bit more, because that transportation piece… Even when you do have access to transportation, if it’s taking an hour to get there and an hour to get home, well, that’s two hours of your day lost that you’ll never get back; whereas, when you work from home, I mean, your commute’s from maybe your shower to your office, which is what? 20 feet. We’re not downplaying that fact that that is a definite, huge advantage for all kinds of individuals, with disabilities and without, but it’s something to really think about a little bit harder before you automatically say, “I want to do this work from home.”
Jeff Thompson:
Another benefit when you’re working from home is not only do you have the comforts of your own home, which includes having the kitchen down the hallway, because when you’re working for someone else, sure you get out there in the social network of things. You go out to lunch with people, and the cost of transportation, and the cost of lunches, and it adds up. Even that coffee along the way. If you figure $5 each day, that’s $25 bucks. Sorry, I did the math there, but working from home, you do have the benefit.
Jeff Thompson:
The thing is, working from home, you sometimes get locked into just working, working, working, but you really need to take your breaks. You really need to take care of yourself, otherwise you won’t want to be home anymore, because you’re always there, and keeping your work in your environment, in that room we were talking about, really helps, because when you walk out of that room, you’re in a different zone, and the rest of the people that you have around your house do not want to be at work with you all day.
Serena Gilbert:
Yeah, that just ties right back into making sure that you have a totally separate area that is your work area. Don’t make it part of your bedroom, or the corner of your living room, because you will grow to resent that room eventually, because I mean, as much as you love your job, it’s still really important to have that divide. Nobody wants their work desk sitting where they’re trying to watch Netflix. It’s just not… Your mind’s just going to start wandering and go right back to that, or even when you’re trying to work, then that distractibility could come up, like maybe I’ll turn this on in the background, and then that could impact your productivity, depending on the type of job that you have.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, and if you have family around, they want you there. They don’t want the person from that company there. They don’t want that rep there. They want you. They want dad. They want mom. They want brother, sister, son, father, whatever it is relationships you’ve got going on, but they want that person around, so you have to really separate work from home and home from work. It’s a balance, but it can be a very positive balance.
Jeff Thompson:
Some of the most biggest positives that I can draw from is you’ve got your own office. That’s really important, because you know what’s working. You know how to get it laid out the way you want it. You don’t have to worry about some janitor coming in and moving something on you, or a tech guy coming in and saying, “We updated your software.” It’s like, oh my gosh. That could throw you off at work. At some companies, IT guys just run an update, and it could throw off your jobs or throw off something else.
Jeff Thompson:
You do have the benefits of, once your machines are working, you can control all that stuff, so your productivity is really good. If they do have checks and balances, where they know how much time you’re logging in, how productive you are, or how long your calls are, you’re singing a happy tune there, because you know your equipment, and it’s working right for you.
Serena Gilbert:
I bet a lot of our listeners are wondering like, okay, great, even with all this stuff that you guys are talking about, I still really want to try to work from home. Another super common question that we see in the group is, well, where do I find these opportunities? What companies are legitimate?
Serena Gilbert:
The number one piece of advice that I can give you when you’re searching for work from home is do not Google work from home opportunities. You will find every scam in the book if you do that. Sure, some might come up that are legitimate, but the vast majority are going to be ones that are not really work from home opportunities, or they’re just going to skim your information and sell it to robocallers or spam emailers and things like that.
Serena Gilbert:
The best way to look for them is to start with legitimate companies, like as an example, and I’m not sure on the accessibility of this, because everyone’s accessibility needs are different. Some can use magnifiers. Others need screen readers, but there’s very large companies that hire work from home companies, like Apple, Hilton, American Express. I mean, there’s so, so many. I would start with some of the really large companies and just searching in their career postings to see if some of them say remote or work from home. That’s a good way to network.
Serena Gilbert:
There’s another really trusted website, called FlexJobs.
Serena Gilbert:
FlexJobs.
Serena Gilbert:
FlexJobs.
Speaker 3:
Flexjobs.com.
Speaker 4:
FlexJobs is the real deal.
Speaker 3:
Colorado’s own, and this is a company called FlexJobs.
Speaker 6:
9News consumer reporter, Mark Koebrich, is looking at this business called FlexJobs.
Mark Koebrich:
For a lot of people, they’re thinking, how do I get one of these jobs? I want one. I want to be able to work flexible hours, stay at home.
Speaker 8:
Sara Sutton Fell joining us, the CEO of FlexJobs. Okay, what is FlexJobs exactly?
Sara Sutton F.:
Well, FlexJobs is a unique job service that helps job seekers find opportunities that have some kind of work flexibility, such as telecommuting, freelance, part-time, flexible schedules.
Serena Gilbert:
FlexJobs, they have legitimate work from home opportunities. Some of them are contract based, some part-time, some full-time, but that does require a little bit of a subscription investment into it, because since they are legitimate, unfortunately to keep that going and the filtering and screening of that, they do charge a subscription fee to be able to have access to those job postings that they have.
Serena Gilbert:
Be cared. That’s my number one. When in doubt, if it seems a little too good to be true, or it seems a little bit fishy, look at the Better Business Bureau, or ask around, ask in the group that we have. We’re happy to help you look at some things.
Jeff Thompson:
You publish a lot of stuff on Glassdoor. Can you explain what Glassdoor is?
Serena Gilbert:
Glassdoor is a website.
Speaker 5:
Finding a great job at a great company can be tough, but now, Glassdoor is making it easier for you to find the right job at the right company faster. Welcome to Glassdoor’s new job search experience, delivering you the latest jobs combined with information from employees to help you make a more informed job decision. Here’s how it works. Whether searching on your mobile device or laptop, start by searching for any job in any city. Set filters relevant to your search. Then check out the open jobs. Better than anywhere else, Glassdoor’s job listings show the job description from the employer and information from employees on what it’s really like to work at a company, including reviews, ratings, and salary details.
Speaker 5:
All the information you need is in one window, allowing you to instantly apply to a job, or save the job and apply later. Glassdoor’s job search also helps employers recruit the very best talent. That’s because data shows when job seekers are more informed about an employer, they’re a higher quality candidate. Plus, employers are encouraged to showcase their employer brand to prospective talent by including a company video, photos, and more, all within the job listing itself. Why wait? Check it out today. Glassdoor, helping people everywhere find a job and company they love.
Serena Gilbert:
I first discovered it when working with the young adults that we help with finding work, as you can go into Glassdoor and type in maybe Apple. People who have previously gone through their interview process or are employees there will offer you information on what’s the interview process like? What is it like to be an employee here? So you can know what are some of the questions that they might ask, or what’s the company culture like? Things like that.
Serena Gilbert:
They also publish a lot of helpful articles for job search tips, helping with your resume, cover letters, all kinds of different things. I do find a lot of really cool articles from there, also US News, and FlexJobs is where a lot of those articles are coming from that I share in there.
Sara Sutton F.:
You put in your profile, and it actually matches you to jobs that we think will fit your profile.
Jeff Thompson:
These are Fortune 500 companies. These are companies that are rated best places to work in the world, and there’s a reason why.
Serena Gilbert:
I believe flexible work is the future. The jobs are hand-screened and vetted. They’re presented very clearly without advertising. They make it easy for people who are looking for work flexibility to find those opportunities.
Sara Sutton F.:
The success stories are what keep us going. It’s what our team loves, to hear them. It’s why we do what we do.
Jeff Thompson:
Awesome. Serena, along with work from home, what other keywords would you utilize in such a search?
Serena Gilbert:
It might also say remote. Another keyword that you might see would be telecommute, something like that. There’s also opportunities that maybe you wouldn’t think of, where you do start out as a traditional employee that is coming into the office, but might have, as a benefit, the opportunity, once you’ve shown that you’re competent in your job, to do work from home. For example, I know people would probably be surprised by this, but a lot of the federal jobs, and I know at least locally here, a lot of the state jobs have, to help with work-life balance, they offer where you can work from home, like a day a week or something like that, so it’s not an all or nothing type of thing. It could be maybe one day a week you get to work from home and not have to worry about the transportation and save a little bit of cost on that.
Jeff Thompson:
Another thing to think about is if you are with a company that gives you the opportunity to work from home, one of the things that may be a problem at first, or something you might have to work through, is they may have a database that you have to log into, and then you’re into their system. Is that system accessible, so that’s something that you might want to check out or find out. If there’s other people that have done this, that’d be great to share or gain knowledge from them.
Serena Gilbert:
Well, I mean, it’s interesting that you mention the systems to remote in, essentially. I very often, especially during the school year, I’m not working in my office. I’m at school. I’m at home. I’m in Denver. I’m anywhere but my office usually, and we use Cisco VPN, and that’s very common. I’m not sure in the private sector, but in the public sector it’s a very trusted type of network. The Cisco VPN is super accessible. Once you set it up, when you log into it, it sends you a code to your phone to… like the two-factor authentication. Essentially, once it does its thing, your computer… It’s like you’re on the network. Nothing else changes. You can still access your network, like your shared drives and things like that.
Serena Gilbert:
The other thing that a lot of companies are moving towards, which sometimes negates the need to actually log into a VPN, is the cloud services, so like G Suite and Office 365, where you can store your files on the cloud and just essentially log into them on any system to be able to access it.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, I think it’s a great opportunity for people to work from home. You still have to look for those jobs. You still have to go through the getting hired process and all that, but it’s a neat opportunity that if you can do it, if you can have the space at home and take advantage of that, it’s really something that is very appealing. It looks good from the outside, but the realities are it’s still work, and you really have to be responsible, a little more responsible, because you’re building the infrastructure of your own office and maintaining it, as opposed to, like we said before, as some IT people doing it.
Jeff Thompson:
It’s an opportunity that if it’s something that you want to do, to look for it. Remember those keywords: Remote, work from home. When you’re searching for jobs, that might be something you might want to type in.
Serena Gilbert:
Another topic that’s really popular, that will be on our very next episode, is the topic of being an independent contractor and self-employment and freelance, and what does that look like? How does that look? What kind of income streams could that be? Lots of people are asking about side gigs, just to earn some extra money. We can definitely delve more into that on our very next episode of Job Insights.
Jeff Thompson:
Remember to check out Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired Facebook group. People are talking about this all the time in conversations, so if you want to learn from them, share with them, or even give advice, Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired Facebook group is there for you.
Serena Gilbert:
You can also find us on Facebook by searching Job Insights and on Twitter @jobinsightsvip.
Jeff Thompson:
You can also find the Blind Abilities Community group on Facebook, as well.
Serena Gilbert:
Which is growing every single day, and we post really fun things in that group. Lots of cool discussions happen. If you have technology questions or technology needs, there’s also the Assistive Technology Community for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
Jeff Thompson:
Well, Serena, great conversation, as always. Looking forward to the next Job Insights with you.
Serena Gilbert:
I really had fun getting back in the studio. Like we said, our very next episode’s going to be all about self-employment and independent contractor positions.
Jeff Thompson:
Great, all right. Want to thank you all for listening. Hope you enjoyed. Until next time, bye-bye.
Serena Gilbert:
And then cue our funky music, right?
Jeff Thompson:
For more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com. Follow us on Twitter @TRww#449
BlindAbilities and download the free Blind Abilities app from the app store or the Google Play store. That’s two words: Blind Abilities. You can enable the Blind Abilities skill on your Amazon device, just by saying, “Enable Blind Abilities.” Listen to us on the Victor Stream or any PodCatcher of your choice: Downcast, Overcast, the native podcast app on your iPhone, and remember, it’s two words. You’ve got it, Blind Abilities.
Jeff Thompson:
Most of all, I want to thank you, the listener. I want to thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed. Until next time, bye-bye.
[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
-What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
Jeff Thompson:
For more podcasts with the blindness perspective:
Check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com On Twitter @BlindAbilities
Download our app from the App store:
‘Blind Abilities’; that’s two words.
Or send us an e-mail at:
Thanks for listening.
*****
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